'It's been relentless' say IT workers on frontline of PHP cyber-security scramble

'It's been relentless' say IT workers on frontline of PHP cyber-security scramble

IT workers worldwide describe the past 48 hours as relentless after two critical vulnerabilities were discovered in PHP, the programming language powering millions of websites. National cyber-security authorities urged teams to immediately download a security fix or take websites and servers offline. UK-based system administrator Adam Mudd said he worked from early morning until 22:30 BST to secure customer systems, often spending more time taking sites offline than fixing the flaw itself. In Mauritius, IT administrator Loganaden Velvindron said many running PHP versions are completely end-of-life, forcing teams to rebuild web applications and change code. The PHP Foundation released its official patch on Wednesday afternoon, triggering a race among administrators to apply it before attackers could act. For ordinary users, the scramble means websites they rely on for shopping, banking and daily services could face brief outages or slowdowns while fixes are applied. Security experts now warn that AI tools are uncovering serious flaws faster than ever, raising concerns about alert fatigue if every discovery triggers the same emergency response.